The Salacity Symposium
by Lionne6
Summary: You have to take your time with Sheldon.
1. Did you pinky swear?

**Story based off of The Big Bang Theory on CBS. Copyright disclaimers all apply. **

_It's time for a longer story or two. Constructive criticism not just welcomed but encouraged. - Lionne Lovegood _

* * *

"Enough questions," Penny said, even as she slid a wooden log from the giant Jenga game she and Amy were playing in the middle of her living room out of the stack, "you have to make your choice."

"So let me get this straight," Amy said, reaching up to adjust her hard hat, "There are two roommates. One is short, popular, swarthy, and enjoys singing in the bathtub, while the other is tall, anti-social, pale, neurotic, has esoteric interests, and an obsession with birds? And they both have questionable fashion sense?"

Penny pursed her lips, looking the Jenga tower up and down before lifting on tiptoe to slide her piece on top. "Yup, that's what it boils down to."

Amy waited to see if the slightly swaying tower would fall, but it did not. She started tapping her fingertip on one wooden brick, nudging it inch by inch out of its place. "And at this moment our friendship is dependent on which one of them I decide to marry?"

At this, there was the sound of a thud coming from the hallway. Amy and Penny turned and gazed out the doorway at their respective boyfriends, Sheldon Cooper and Leonard Hofstadter. Leonard was carrying two huge white plastic bags emblazoned with a train logo, and his forehead was furrowed so deeply in confusion that his eyebrows nearly met his hairline. Sheldon was staring at the two of them like a deer in the headlights, the even larger white plastic bag laying at his feet the source of the thump that had caught their attention.

The girls stood sizing the boys up for a heartbeat or two, and then Amy turned to Penny and lifted her hand, pinky curled upwards. "I chose Bert," she said.

Penny finally tore her eyes off Leonard, lifted her own hand and linked her pinky with Amy's, and the two shook, breaking into smiles as they made their oath.

In the hallway, Sheldon turned on Leonard, demanding in an anxious, wounded tone:

"Bert who?"

* * *

Eventually, there was the sound of a crash. Leonard and Sheldon looked up from the train tracks they were laying across the living room floor, and within seconds, Penny came waltzing through the door with Amy on her heels.

"Are you sure you don't want to pick that up?" Amy inquired, frowning slightly as she lifted her satchel over her head and placed it on Sheldon's desk chair.

"Oh, I'll get to that later," Penny said airily, even as she stopped to look over the complicated little village that had sprung up on the floor. "Much later," she muttered to herself, crossing her arms as she looked at all of the furniture pushed back against the walls, and then to the train tracks again.

"Knock knock," Sheldon said, shifting to lie on his stomach and snap two pieces of train tracks together. He was wearing his stripped overalls and hat on his head, and didn't break focus from the task he had at hand. "Oh, hello Penny. Hello, Amy. Why please, come in and make yourselves at home."

"Now, now," Amy chided, "No need to be sarcastic. We came over to do a nice thing for you." She held up a brown grocery bag and walked into the kitchen.

"Yeah," Penny said, hopping over two lines of tracks and going to sit cross-legged next to Leonard on the floor. "Amy's decided to cook you dinner."

"I could use some help in the kitchen, bestie," Amy said, even as she started unpacking groceries from the bag.

"Could you?" Penny replied, blue eyes opening wide and innocent, as if she could barely wrap her mind around the concept.

"You're going to cook us dinner?" Leonard asked, sitting up in surprise and knocking over the small forest of plastic trees he had just set up.

Sheldon made a sharp "tsk" of disapproval and gave Leonard a dark look, "We'd be better off if Penny has nothing to do with it," he noted. "Unless we're looking forward to spending our weekend with salmonella poisoning."

"Hey," Penny said, "I've been a waitress for 10 years, and I've never gotten anyone sick with anything." She paused and then added quietly, "That I know of."

Leonard looked at her sidelong, and then set about setting the forest back into place. "I'm sure you haven't," he said confidently.

Penny leaned into him and murmured, "You can't give someone salmonella poisoning by spitting on their burger, can you?"

"Um, no," Leonard replied slowly, finishing with the trees and reaching into the box nearest him to pull out a little red barn, some white fencing and several farm animals. He placed the barn next to the trees and started to lay out the fencing but Sheldon looked up and interrupted him.

"Leonard," Sheldon said, "No one in their right mind would set up a farm so close to some conifers. Where are you going to make room for the fields?"

"Maybe the cows like to spend some time in the shade!" Leonard objected, continuing to lay out his fencing. Penny picked up the box and started to inspect it with a skeptical look on her face.

Amy had gotten out several pots and pans, and injected into the conversation, "Don't mind me, I'll just do this myself."

Apparently, everyone took her up on that, as Sheldon and Leonard got into a heated discussion about the layout of their village, and then whether to name it NiceNoBullyville or Sheldonville, and then about whether to add the ferry attachment when they were clearly building in the countryside and no where near water, but Leonard stood firm on the point that if the town was going to be called Sheldonville than there should be a river called the Waters of Leonard with a nice riverboat on it, and in the meantime Penny put on a puppet show for herself in which the cows, chickens and pigs were putting on a talent competition, and she was in the midst of entertaining a perplexed Leonard and annoyed Sheldon with a little scene from _Les Mis_ when Amy announced that dinner was done. All three of them blinked in surprise, unaware that so much time had already passed.

"Wait!" Sheldon said, putting in the last piece of train tracks, "Just 5 more minutes! The Sheldon Express is almost ready for it's maiden voyage!"

"Well, alright," Amy said, "But I have spaghetti with little hot dogs cut up in it, and you'll want to eat it before it gets cold."

Sheldon sat up straight, looking between his train set and the plates Amy was preparing. Suddenly he sprung to his feet, saying airily, "Maiden voyages are better started in the morning, anyway. Goodnight, Sheldonville!" With that he snapped off the lamp and prowled into the kitchen, coming to loom right over Amy's shoulder and stare at the food as she started adding servings of green beans to everyone's plate.

Penny and Leonard looked at each other, and Leonard gently pried a little pig from Penny's hand and turned it over for inspection. He sang in a very low voice in her ear, "On my oink, pretending you're be-oink me." Leonard put a little treble in his voice, and clasped the pig to his chest, continuing to sing, "All a-oink, I oink with you 'till morning…."

"Leonard," Sheldon said, his tone full of disapproval. He placed forks on all of the plates, and picked two up and brought them over to Penny and Leonard.

Penny, who had been trying her best to smoother a giggle, took her plate and looked up at Sheldon, "What, Sheldon? Does the Roommate Agreement have a provision in it against butchering show tunes?"

"There are clauses which apply," Sheldon replied sternly, giving Leonard a dark look as he passed over his plate, "But unfortunately they don't go into affect until after nine."

Leonard grinned widely at that, and took it as an excuse to go on, plucking up the cow and continuing on, "I mooed a moo in days gone mooooo…."

"Okay, sweetie, that's enough," Penny said, taking the cow and pig away from him again and placing them within the circle of train tracks. She climbed up into the large comfy chair that had been pushed back against the desk under the windows, and began to twirl some spaghetti around her fork. "Amy," she said, "this looks delicious."

Amy carried over Sheldon's plate and her own, and while she went back to the kitchen he sat in his spot on the couch which had been pushed back against the coat closet. Sheldon stopped to poke his fork into the spaghetti, noting, "Spaghetti can be notoriously delicious, Penny. Particularly when it's not crunchy."

Penny gave Sheldon a long look, narrowing her eyes, but he didn't look back at her at all. Instead he took the glasses of Strawberry Quik which Amy had brought over and held them as she sat down and took her own plate.

"Let's all try to settle in for a peaceful dinner for once?" Amy suggested, taking a sip of her bright pink milk.

Much to her surprise, everyone apparently agreed as the room descended into silence as all attention turned towards the food. They ate as people who had not realized they were starving until they had been served, and a companionable peace fell over all four of them as they ate and relaxed, admiring the set of toy train tracks and village that lay assembled on the living room floor.

* * *

In the end, Sheldon and Amy had rolled up their sleeves to do the dishes while Penny claimed that Leonard needed to come over to help her restack the giant Jenga game, although by the occasional muffled bangs and thumps coming through the walls, Amy suspected that the stacking they were doing was more horizontal than vertical. She placed the last pot into the dishwasher and Sheldon poured in the soap, closed it and switched the dial to "normal wash."

"Thank you for dinner," Sheldon said, standing back and pulling a long piece of paper towel off their roll. He tore it in half and handed one piece to Amy, then proceeded to dry his own hands carefully.

"My pleasure," Amy said, using her own piece of paper towel to dry her hands. She walked to the waste paper basket, using her toe to flip open the lid. She held it open so that Sheldon could drop his own piece in as well. "Thank you for hosting a lovely dinner. I'll see you on Monday." She started walking over to his desk as she rolled down her sleeves again.

"Monday?" Sheldon asked, sounding surprised. "Why won't I see you tomorrow?"

"Well," Amy said, turning back to look at him as she buttoned her sleeve back demurely around her wrist, "Tomorrow I'm going to a lecture on statistical-mechanical analysis of self-organization and pattern formation during the development of visual maps, given by Klaus Obermayer, at UCLA, with two of my co-workers. Meanwhile, you're going to spend the day playing with your trains." She gave a nod to the sprawling village and train tracks laid out on the floor.

Sheldon also looked at his trains and then back to Amy, and fidgeted. "That doesn't mean you have to go home now, does it? Can't you stay a little longer?"

"It's five minutes past eight," Amy replied, as she fastened the button around her other wrist, "Don't you have an appointment with the laundry room in ten minutes?"

"I do," Sheldon agreed slowly, looking down the hall. He glanced sidelong back at Amy, studying her as she preened carefully, adjusting her green cardigan to show a precise half inch of her flowered Oxford shirt at the sleeves. He shifted a little, and when hesitantly offered his invitation, "You…could come help me sort my laundry? We could keep talking?"

Amy looked up, green eyes widening in surprise. Her heart did a little flutter, and she couldn't keep the shock out of her tone, "You're inviting me into your room?"

"You've been there before," Sheldon shrugged.

Amy seemed to think about it, and then nodded her head in agreement. "I supposed I could help you," she said carefully, even as a tiny smile appeared on her face.

Although it was not to Amy's surprise, it was to her mild disappointment that Sheldon had literally invited her into his room to help with his laundry. They spent the time discussing the merits of the lecture Amy was to see the next day; even though Amy's mind had been on sneaking a look into Sheldon's underwear drawer again, or even trying to lure him into the idea of making out on his bed, before she knew it was she pairing socks and lecturing him on the formation of topographic maps and orientation and ocular dominance columns in the striate cortex while he inspected his clothing carefully and occasionally spritzed stain remover on tee-shirts that looked perfectly immaculate to Amy's eye.

"The formation of orientation and ocular dominance columns is the result of a global instability of the retinoptic projection above a critical value of those order parameters, anyway," Sheldon said, even as Amy finished her tasks and began wandering around the edge of Sheldon's bed to look at the items on one of his multiple chests of drawers.

"Agreed," Amy said, as she peered curiously at a black case and then reached to unlatch it and flip it open. "Oh wow," she breathed, "Is this a Littmann stethoscope?"

Sheldon looked up briefly, and then nodded, "Yes. It's one of the things my aunt gave me when I was a child just in case I needed an occupation to fall back on if I failed as a Theoretical Physicist."

"What a waste of money," Amy said, lifting the ear piece and black rubber tubing out of the box to admire it, "As if you were going to fail at that." She put the stethoscope around her neck and looked at the little dial hanging down between her breasts, lifting it and turning it in her fingers. She gave a little breath of awe and said, "Double-sided, three function chestpiece with a smoke finish."

Sheldon started smiling, glancing up to watch Amy for a moment, pleased both with her knowledge and with her compliment. He said nothing, but he dropped his last tee-shirt into his basket and set down his spray bottle of stain remover. He clasped his hands on both sides of the basket without lifting it, content to spend a few extra seconds watching her with the medical equipment.

"How old were you when you knew what you wanted your career to be?" Amy asked, looking up at him.

Sheldon started a moment, and lifted the basket to his chest. "Four," he answered. "I had started reading the collected works of Einstein, Dirac and Oppenheimer by that time." He paused, and then added delicately, "My Pop Pop bought them for me for my birthday."

Amy nodded a little, and then put both hands on the earpieces, and went to almost put them in her ears, though she paused and looked at him for his permission first. He nodded slightly, and she fastened them into place. She wandered over and placed the chest piece against his heart, and looked up into his eyes, and for a moment they stood there close together, and Amy could quite distinctly discern the increase in his heartbeat, and she did not fail to notice the way his pupils dilated as he looked down at her.

Abruptly, Sheldon stepped back away from her, eyes jerking this way and that as he clutched the laundry basket closer to him.

"Sheldon…" Amy tried to say softly.

"I…I'm behind schedule," Sheldon stammered, turning away and opening his bedroom door. He walked through it, and then walked back and pulled a roll of quarters off his bureau. He walked out again, and got halfway down the hall before he walked back, looking at her with round eyes. "Are you coming?" he inquired, turning on his heel and leaving again before she gave her answer.

"That's the question for the ages," Amy muttered as she took off the stethoscope and draped it back over its case. She shook her head a little and took off after Sheldon, joining him on a silent walk down the stairs to the laundry room in the basement, the air thick with things unspoken.

* * *

_To be continued. - Lio_


	2. What's a morning alarm clock?

_Author's note: why didn't anyone tell me I was spelling stethoscope incorrectly? The position of beta is now officially open, if anyone would like to apply._

* * *

They had stood together quietly, placing clothes in the washer, carefully measuring soap and fabric softener, exchanging only a few words as they went about the process of getting Sheldon's laundry started. Amy was surprised when Sheldon turned to head back upstairs considering the sign that advised the building tenants not to leave their laundry unattended, but Sheldon only remarked that there were currently no threats against him in the building, so they went back upstairs.

Amy's mind was preoccupied. She followed Sheldon back to his room again, drifting over to the stethoscope while he put his laundry basket back into his closet for the time being. She picked up the apparatus she had haphazardly left behind and opened its case again, intent on putting Sheldon's possession away neatly and properly. She was surprised when she felt him directly behind her, taking the stethoscope from her hands and turning it in his own to inspect.

"You know, when I was 18 and getting my second PhD, one of the girls in my dorm who was pre-Med tried to teach me how to use this." He paused and then added, almost as an after-thought, "Of course, she did it wrong."

Amy watched his hands as he curled the black tubing of the stethoscope around his finger, her brow furrowing slightly as she considered his confession. "How did she do it wrong? How did you meet this girl?" she asked.

"She and I had met in the library – not many people study in the science library every Saturday night, and we had exchanged polite greetings, and talked about our studies a few times. Anyway, one night, just a week before graduation, I was studying in the library and she came over to my desk. She said the soda machine had given her an extra can and asked if I wanted it."

Amy stayed silent, simply listening, mesmerized by his hands.

Sheldon seemed to get caught up in the memory and continued, "We talked for awhile. She had told me that she was studying to be a diagnostician, with a specialty in nephrology and infectious diseases, so when she started telling me how she was going into her residency starting that summer I congratulated her. But she was worried about her bedside manner and asked if I would be willing to let her give me a physical exam just to practice before she had to start doing the real thing." Sheldon paused and then went on slowly, "I was concerned at the time that the lymph nodes in my throat felt swollen, and had been for days, which was a clear indicator that perhaps I was developing throat cancer, so I thought that it couldn't hurt to let her look at me. We went back to her dorm room and she had me strip down to my underwear and tee-shirt and lay down on the bed. I remember..."

Sheldon trailed off, and turned the stethoscope over in his hands.

"Remember what?" Amy gently prodded. She had been standing at his elbow, intently watching the shifting expressions on his face as he recounted his story.

Sheldon shifted a little, his brow furrowing. He went on reluctantly, "She was going through the entire process correctly, telling me what she was listening for and why you place the stethoscope where you do. I mean, all things I already knew, of course. Then she had the chest piece on my abdomen to listen to my stomach, and then she…" Sheldon trailed off for a moment, his forehead furrowing even more deeply, "then she suddenly slid it into my underwear and said something about listening for my 'morning alarm clock.'" Sheldon paused and looked down at Amy, inquiring, "What would an alarm clock be doing in my underwear?" Sheldon's facial expression turned baffled, and he turned the stethoscope over in his hands as if the answer to the comment lay somewhere in it.

Amy bit down on her lower lip, "What did you do?"

"I left!" Sheldon said, looking at Amy in surprise, as if the answer was obvious. "That's not correct procedure; I don't have an alarm clock in my pants." He shrugged and continued, "I grabbed my clothes, informed her of her mistaken methodology, and told her she was probably going to be a horrible doctor, and I bolted back for the safety of my own room." He shook his head, and added for emphasis, "Clearly she was a total quack."

"Sheldon," Amy said, unable to keep from shaking her head at him, "you realize she was just trying to have sex with you." She noticed a Rubik's cube that was sitting out among the toys on his dresser and picked it up. She turned away from him, studying the Rubik's cube rather intently, and sat down on the edge of his bed.

"What on earth are you talking about?" Sheldon said, staring at her as she walked away, apparently preoccupied with the colorful cube in her hands.

Amy leaned her back up against Sheldon's headboard, perched on the edge of his bed with one toe on the floor and her other foot hooked around the back of her calf. "Sex, Sheldon," Amy said, looking up at him. "She was trying to seduce you. Probably figured that inviting you up to play doctor would be more effectual than asking you up to see her CD collection."

Sheldon spent several seconds just staring at Amy, and then he looked up and frowned. "Actually, she did ask me up to see her CD collection once."

"Of course she did," Amy muttered, leaning her head back against the headboard. She closed her eyes tiredly. "Of course she did." Amy rubbed her forehead a moment with one hand, and then looked up at Sheldon and studied his shocked face. She felt compelled to explain a few things to him, and said, "Sheldon, listen to me. She really liked you, and she was running out of time to do anything about it. All that time hanging out in the library and trying to talk to you hadn't worked out, so she tried something a little bolder. And you rejected her, by the way. Not very nicely, I might add."

Sheldon didn't seem to know what to say to that. He looked down at the stethoscope he had twined in his fingers, studying the metal curves of the earpieces, of the black tubing, and the circle of the sensitive chest piece. There wasn't a straight line on the apparatus anywhere, and the funny rubber tubing looped and curled by its own whims, never staying in place nor being predictable, and he could eye it and roughly calculate its curves and swoops, much like he had spent a considerable amount of time calculating those belonging to the woman in the room with him, but it was so impossible to pin down, just like her. Sheldon caressed his fingertip along a curve of the stethoscope carefully, and then started to put it away in its box, pressing it gently into the foam cut outs meant to cradle it in place and hold it still.

Amy opened her eyes and considered the frame of Sheldon's back. She asked quietly, "Do you ever still think of her?"

"No," Sheldon answered, carefully closing the lid on the stethoscope's black case. "Not for years." He looked back over his shoulder at her, and she dropped her eyes, looking at the cube in her hands. She started to turn it, the cube making a soft whirring noise as she changed the monochromatic sides into neat checkerboards of different colors, the red on the green, the blue on the orange, and the white on the yellow. Sheldon watched her play with it, change it, his perfect cube with its three by three colorful panels, nine squares to a side, nine sides in all, eighty-one different smaller squares, and its perfect twenty-seven line frame. He had solved it and made it perfect, and now she was twisting it and changing it so easily in her small hands, turning the simple walls of color into more complicated patterns, and Sheldon's stomach did a strange lurch as he watched her, fascinated and terrified at the same time.

"What did you do, when you got back to your dorm room?" Amy asked, taking a look up at him.

"What do you mean?" Sheldon asked, giving a subtle roll to his shoulders as he tried to shrug off his feelings.

"I mean," Amy said, looking up at the ceiling for answers before looking back to him, "After you left her room, did you go back to your dorm room and study some more?"

Sheldon paused, and then answered cautiously, "No."

"Did you go home and masturbate?" Amy inquired, without batting a lash. To her surprise, Sheldon didn't protest her question, but he didn't even move at all, seeming to completely freeze. Without realizing it, she twisted the Rubik cube in her hands, beginning to mix up any semblance of structure or order to the color scheme. Sheldon watched her do it and grew paler, reaching to place a hand on top of his dresser as if for support.

"Did I what?" he finally asked.

Amy shifted and pulled herself a little taller, deliberately putting the cube down behind a pillow to hide it from him. "Sheldon, look. The game of 'playing doctor' has been around forever; even little children play it. It really has nothing to do with actually diagnosing anyone; the purpose is to give two people an excuse to become vulnerable and undressed, to explore each others bodies and satisfy their curiosity about another person external to themselves; a body different than theirs. This girl you knew put you into a vulnerable position, asked you to put your trust in her, and then explored your body; touching you, leaving you exposed. One would expect you would have been aroused; turned on. It would have been a perfectly normal reaction."

He frowned at the word "normal," but very slowly, Sheldon approached the bed and sat down on the edge a few feet from Amy. He leaned over, putting his elbows on his knees, and looked down at his hands, pinching one thumb with the other. Finally, he said in a very soft voice, "Would you think less of me if I did?"

"No," Amy said simply, watching him.

Sheldon clasped his hands together and stared at the floor, sitting that way for a long time. Finally, he roused himself and seemed to give himself a shake, clearing his throat as he said, "I….I can't…I can't remember."

Amy inhaled, and bit the inside of her lower lip, shoulders slumping as she glanced at the floor and then the profile of Sheldon's face. She picked up the Rubik's cube and gave it several more twists, slowly and deliberately, until she was sure it had been jumbled beyond repair. Sheldon glanced at her out of the corner of his eyes, looking horrified, and then went back to staring at the floor.

Amy stood and walked to the door, still spinning the cube around quickly in her hands. Sheldon's stomach seemed to lurch with every twist of the cube, and every footfall that carried her away from him. At his door, she turned around and said, "Sheldon, that girl wanted to have sex with you, and you remember perfectly well how that made you feel, and you are lying when you say you don't."

Sheldon turned around to look at her, his jaw setting tersely. She tossed him the Rubik's cube, and he caught up against his chest. The two of them looked at each other for a long moment, and then Amy spun on her heel and left without another word.

It was a long time before Sheldon finally roused himself from thought. He looked at the cube in his hands. Quickly, with deft and sure movement of his hands, he spun the pieces of the cube this way and that, resetting it back to the way it had been before, undoing everything she had done to change it, until it returned to its perfect state of solid panels of color. Sheldon stood up and put the cube on top of the stethoscope case, and looked at it sitting there, on top of the curvy, sensitive instrument the black box contained, the two objects together, touching. Then he picked the cube up quickly, paced across the room, and stuffed it into his underwear drawer, hiding it far back behind all of his neat stacks of simple, cotton white briefs. He slammed the drawer closed and turned away, grabbing the remaining roll of quarters from his bureau.

Resolutely, he marched out of his room, down the hall, striding over the fake, tiny village that he now felt entirely stupid to have named after himself, and took himself downstairs.

When he reached the basement, he flipped open the door to one of the dryers and stepped over to the first washing machine, and started shifting his clothing from one to the other. Something in the movements of this basic routine started to calm his nerves once again, and just when he felt his breathing was starting to slow and reality was regaining its equilibrium, he double checked all of the washing machines and found a black lump that he had missed plastered up against the wall of the barrel of one. Reaching in, he pulled out a black tee-shirt and caught sight of a piece of the graphic in the balled up material.

After a pause, Sheldon spread the cloth open slowly, staring down at the graphic on one of his favorite shirts. The mixed up Rubik's cube symbol stared back at him, the graphic showing the cube melting into a chaos of colors, their shape lost, their pattern becoming a meaningless puddle. He reached out his hand and stroked the tips of his fingers over it, thinking about when he had bought it, the times he had worn it, including the very last time, in the movie theater with her, holding her hand in the dark.

Sheldon closed his hand and balled up the shirt into his fist, turning and raising his arm to throw the shirt into the trash. At the last second something stopped him. He hugged the damp material to his chest instead, and then threw it into the dryer with everything else. With curt gestures he closed the dyers and deployed the coin slots, listening to the low grumble of the machines as they came to life.

"Forget all of this nonsense," he hissed to himself, but the superior, almost computer-like recall of his mind would not let him; the mnemotechnics of memory rumbled through his head like a roll of thunder, spinning hot like the dryers surrounding him, bringing back in perfect detail each past episode, letting him know he was unable to escape it.

* * *

He was standing, staring at one of the dryers, when Leonard and Penny came in, laughing softly between each other, and carrying a laundry basket full of Penny's sheets. They stopped when they saw Sheldon, and Leonard grinned and noted, "Keeping an eye on those machines, Sheldon? Making sure they won't rise up and take over the basement?"

Sheldon looked up and blinked at them, and then replied, "How can you trust anything when you can't see where it keeps its brain, hum?" He paused and then inquired, "How did your round of giant Jenga go?"

Leonard and Penny stopped and looked at him, confused.

"I heard all of those noises," Sheldon said, "It sounded like it got quite spirited."

"Oh, yeah," Penny said, biting her lower lip, "We….we ended up playing a different game."

Sheldon looked at her in confusion and Penny waved her hands a little bit, "Never mind, it's uh, a new two-person game we made up. We're very into it."

"Ah," Sheldon said, nodding as if he understood, or at least accepted Penny's remark at face value. "So who won?"

"I gave Penny some stiff competition," Leonard said, grinning widely even as Penny swatted his arm. He walked towards the washing machines, balancing the laundry basket on top of one. "But she plays dirty. She always wins." The man could not seem to stop smiling, and Sheldon looked between both of them in confusion.

"Never mind that," Penny said, casting Leonard a long look. She turned her attention back to Sheldon and asked, "Soooooo?" She stepped over closer to him, "How was your night with Amy? Did the two of you play any games? Maybe a round of counterfactuals?"

Sheldon looked down and shuffled his feet, turning around to return to supervising his dryer. "She helped me with my laundry."

"Was it dirty?" Penny asked, coming to stand by his shoulder. She looked up at him, her expression full of false innocence.

Sheldon cast her a warning glance, but then seemed to think better of it. He crossed his arms over his stomach, saying, "Penny, would you say that your extensive sexual history makes you an expert, of sorts, on all matters relating to coitus? That you're a sexual prodigy, if you will?"

"I, uh," Penny made a face, looking at Sheldon skeptically, "I have a bad feeling about this, but I'm in a generous mood, so….sure, Sheldon! You may consider me a sexual expert." She muttered under her breath, "At least in comparison to you."

"I do not want to know where he is going with this," Leonard muttered, stuffing Penny's sheets into the washing machine as fast as he could.

"Good," Sheldon said, swinging his arms to clasp his hands behind his back. "I have a question, and I believe that after you, for lack of a better word, 'probed' into my personal life a few weeks ago, you should be willing to help me out now."

"I am warning you," Leonard drawled softly, even as he picked up the jug of laundry detergent.

Penny ignored Leonard, and instead crossed her arms over her stomach and tilted her head back, widening her stance and literally bracing herself for what was coming. "I can handle this. Lay it on me, Sheldon."

"Alright," Sheldon agreed, nodding his head. "Tell me, what is a 'morning alarm clock' a sexual metaphor for?" Sheldon ducked his chin and looked at Penny seriously.

Leonard made a choking sound, and dropped the cap of the laundry detergent into the dryer, tried to catch it and lost his footing, falling in after it. Penny looked over, taking in her boyfriend's flailing legs and squirming buttocks, and moved across the room to grab him by the waist band of his cargo pants and start pulling him back. "I, uh," Penny said, even as she pulled Leonard back out. "Sheldon, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I have no idea."

Sheldon threw his hands up, complaining, "Penny! If you can't help me with this then what are you good for?"

"Hey! How am I supposed to know what a 'morning alarm clock' means?" Penny protested, even as she put Leonard back on his feet. "I've never heard of it."

"It refers to an erection you get in the morning," Leonard cut in, looking at Sheldon warily as he wiped some bright blue goo off his cheek, "As the brain enters the REM-deep sleep phrase the body's skeletal muscle structure relaxes and causes hypervasodilation in the capillaries of the body, resulting in waking up to an erection that typically rouses you from sleep. Hence, your natural morning alarm clock."

"Oh," Sheldon said, blinking once and staring blankly at the wall. "I guess she was right."

"Okay, I'm going to let you guys discuss this further," Penny said, gesturing between the two of them, "'Cause whenever you start in on hyper, uh, hypervasa-something-or-other, it's, you know, uh, clearly boy talk." She tried to sidestep away, but Leonard caught her by the fabric of her tank top and gently yanked her back.

"Oh, no you don't," Leonard said, scrutinizing Sheldon closely. "You are not leaving me alone in this one, missy."

"That's okay," Sheldon said, "That's all I wanted to know."

"That's it?" Leonard asked.

"That's it," Sheldon repeated, walking briskly for the door.

"Wait," Penny said, "Aren't you going to tell us where that question even came from?"

Sheldon stopped in the doorway and turned, spending several seconds looking back and forth between them innocently. "No," he said, turning on his heel and exiting without another word.

Penny and Leonard exchanged a glance, and then Leonard said slowly, "Hyper-vaso-di-la-tion."

"You can call it whatever you want," Penny told him, "But you are paying to wash these sheets." She patted the washing machine twice and walked away.

* * *

In his room, Sheldon carefully placed the Rubik's cube back on top of the stethoscope case once again. He touched the box, and the apparatus it contained: curvy, sensitive, flexible, changeable, all of that kept secret, unseen, hidden inside its plain black shell. He touched the Rubik's cube and considered its dimensions: square, colorful, organized, hard. He bit his lower lip, looking at the cube distrustfully. It was changeable too, and he was not sure he liked that idea. Even more, he wasn't sure how he felt about leaving the two objects together, the masculine on top of the feminine, but when he reached out to move them he stopped, unwilling to separate them either. Instead he just looked at them, attempting to get used to the idea of them together. He took a deep breath, and then turned away and sat down on his bed with his laptop, opening it and starting to type.

He had some private research to do.

* * *

_Thanks for reading,_

_Lio_


	3. The Assessment

Sheldon stretched his long legs out in front of him on the bed and balanced his computer on his lap. While this was not ergonomically correct (a fact that bothered him), he was not comfortable doing this research out in the living room. He leaned his back against his headboard and typed into the Google search engine: "How to talk about sex with your girlfriend."

The first result Google spit back at him was "How to know if your girlfriend wants to have sex with you." Stopping to ponder the question, Sheldon stared ahead of him with an intense expression. _Confound it,_ he thought. _Logically__ you would have to figure out if your girlfriend wants to have sex with you before you talk to her about it. Because if she doesn't want to have sex with you, obviously you don't have to go through the hideous experience of talking about it.  
_

"Clever Google," he praised the search engine in a mutter.

The webpage that came up was part of WikiHow. _Other men ask this question too?_ Sheldon thought, even as he exhaled a breath he didn't know he had been holding. Somehow it was good to know he wasn't the only man in the known universe who had ever pondered this question.

His relief was short-lived, however, when he read the first step at the top of the page: "Assess your relationship." It felt like an important valve closed up somewhere in his chest, and an electrical pulse was misfiring from his sternum up to the nape of his neck. He continued reading. "Ask yourself how far you and your girlfriend have come along in terms of intimacy and maturity. In particular, pay attention to whether or not the two of you are engaged in an uneven power dynamic (or even an outright power struggle); if the relationship is unbalanced with one partner always attempting to please the other, this will make both of you unable to approach sex with an honest, healthy attitude."

_How far we've come in terms of intimacy and maturity?_ Sheldon thought, furrowing his brow, even as mental images of rulers and tape measures came to mind. He tried to picture placing himself up to Amy, figuring her height, taking her measure. None of these seemed like the proper way in which to measure their relationship. _Watts? Jules? Knots? How do I accurately measure a relationship that had lasted me for three years, over half of it now as boyfriend and girlfriend proper? _He visualized a massive bronze scale, himself in one cup and Amy in the other, holding onto the chains as they teetered up and down, as if in a giant seesaw_. A power struggle? No. Amy and I are not in the midst of a power struggle. _However, Sheldon took a long look at the word "intimate," and found himself starting to blush._  
_

Then and there, Sheldon closed the laptop and ran both hands roughly through his hair, clasping the back of his bowed head. _I don't know,_ he thought, _I don't know how to analyze any of that. Personal relationships, body language, sarcasm, facial expressions – that's not what I am good at. My weakness, my kryptonite, my fear of bats – precisely what I suck at, and suck hard. _

Sheldon growled softly, tore the computer from his lap and sprung off of his bed. He opened one of his dresser drawers and removed a little wooden box from behind some of his superhero shirts. He put it carefully on the dresser and opened it, removing the colorful little hacky sack. He looked around his room, his face intent. Even by the door, he barely had enough room to play, not to mention that Leonard and Penny were both still awake, and might come back into this part of the apartment at any time. They could hear him; they could ask questions.

_Maybe if I just hold it,_ Sheldon thought, rolling the hackey sack in his fingers. He opened the door and strode into the hallway, and slowly, his hands clasped behind his back, he began to pace the apartment like a caged animal, walking down the hallway, around the couch, along the desks, around the kitchen island, and back down the hallway again, turning at Leonard's door and pacing back the way he came, rolling the hackey sack in his fingers the whole route, squeezing his thumb into the beany depths, mashing it in his fingers, squeezing it until it seemed it should burst, and then rolling it back around his thumb again.

_First of all,_ he reasoned, _I __shouldn't tell __my__self that I __suck; that __isn't__ going to get __me__ anywhere. _

_"But you do suck!" _a tiny voice in his head told him merrily.

_"Ah, look who has decided to show up tonight. Freud would call that your 'id,'"_ another part of Sheldon's brain noted dryly.

Together, they were that terrible two-faced laughing hyena of his psychic apparatus, which Sheldon had spent a lifetime driving down into the utter depths, drowning out through discipline and work. A lifetime striving to not just ignore, but to rise above. To cut out of his very system with surgical precision, and fling into the gutter where it belonged.

_"Except you can't do that,"_ that part of his mind reminded him, _"and if you're going to give Amy what you think she wants—hell, what you really want—if your relationship is going to mature and grow and come to include sex and touch, you're going to have to come back here, Sheldon Cooper. Back to me. Back to your baser urges, back to your needs, your wants, your desires. Back to where it all begins, buddy."_

Sheldon stopped at the fridge, opened the door to the freezer, crossed his arms on top of the lower door, and rested his head against them, feeling the blistering cold burn against his hair and creep into his scalp. _Please, Jesus, let it burn right through the bone and into my brain, _he thought.

Sheldon stood that way for a long time, his mind turning towards two options: forget this and let her go, or take what he wanted, embrace the chaos, turn towards the dark side, let himself surrender to all of those evil impulses that had been plaguing him for months. _No, to be honest, years._

_I've always been more of an empire man,_ his memory sparked to a little bit of dialogue he had once had with Leonard that was now coming back to haunt him. _But that dark side had never been chaotic at all; it had been organized, driven, and clean. Just as he liked it, just as he always admired. So which is it, Sheldon?_ He lifted his head out of the freezer and reluctantly shut the door, continuing to consider the world of good and evil with which he was so familiar. Sometimes evil was portrayed a certain way, like The Joker or Venom – instinctual, destructive, wild, chaotic. Or it could be ruthlessly organized and efficient, like the Empire, Dr. Octopus, Lex Luthor and the Legion of Doom. _And what,_ he reminded himself, _was even remotely evil about my relationship, which makes me happy? _He stood there awhile, holding onto the door of the freezer. _Because it does make me happy, doesn't it? Love was always supposed to be the ultimate power of good and–WAIT._

_Did__ I just use the word love?_

Sheldon turned away from the kitchen sharply, and returned to pacing his apartment like a jungle cat, rolling his hackey sack from hand to hand, until he stopped in front of the apartment's front door and deliberately locked it. _Screw Leonard._ He strode into the living room and started to bounce the hackey sack on his foot, counting, one…two...three…and up, again and again, letting his mind unspool freely.

He had been playing for several minutes, his mind starting to clear, when he kicked the hackey sack up and caught it in his hand. _I have our date night minutes. My logbooks of social interactions. My eidetic memory itself–if I'm going to find the answers those are perfectly good places to start. _Sheldon stood up taller, straightening his spine. _Assess the relationship, _he repeated to himself, remembering his organized collection of paperwork and records_. It's as good a place to start as any._

Sheldon retrieved their Date Night minute binder, his logbook and a blank notepad from his desk, grabbed a pen, and went back to his room. He put these aside on the edge of the bed and opened his computer again. He paused to look up at his dresser, the colorful Rubik's cube and stephoscope sitting so peacefully there together. _Perhaps I can do this after all._ _Perhaps there is hope._

Sheldon skimmed over the next steps listed in the WikiHow article. "Two: Become more intimate in non-sexual ways. Three: Pay more attention to her body language. Four: Listen to her tone of voice. Five: Talk about sex. Six: Ask. Wait until you have enthusiastic consent," the page read in the end. "What is sexier, a resigned 'okay' or a whole-hearted 'take me now?'"

Sheldon closed his computer again with painful slowness, his eyes unfocused on something unseen in the distance. All veins in his body seemed closed, a cold sweat settled on his brow, and electric pulses of anxiety and despair coursed through his system. For a moment, his mind was simply completely blank, completely overwhelmed, and then a little voice spoke up and said simply, "You have absolutely no idea, do you?"

Sheldon placed his computer aside, and then stood from his bed, his body shaking from head to toe. He collected the date night minutes, personal social interaction logbook and notebook in a stack with the stethoscope and Rubik's cube on top of his dresser. He opened a drawer, and took out his favorite, red Flash teeshirt, unfolded it, and draped it over all of the objects as one would place a flag over a soldier's coffin. He tucked the edges of the shirt around them all tightly, his hands still trembling, and then retreated with his computer to the living room. He put his computer on his desk, neatly squaring the edges parallel, and plugged it in to recharge. He put away his hacky sack again, hiding it back behind a drawer of clean teeshirts.

Then, Sheldon returned to the laundry room, folding every item with his folding board as he always did, taking the dry and tumbled pieces of cloth and making them smooth, straight, and tight, and as he tossed the panels of his blue board back and forth in this task, he turned out the lights in various rooms in his mind, fastened the windows, closed the doors, and shut it all down.

When he was done, he put his laundry away where it belonged, changed into his Saturday pajamas, and went through the apartment with a can of Pledge and microfiber rag. He dusted behind the books, and then went back and reset all of their edges using a ruler, so that they were perfectly aligned and sitting exactly one inch back on the shelf, and then he cleaned his own desk and then Leonard's, spacing each item on top precisely an alternating one and five inches apart, using his ruler to keep track, cleaning meticulously until the tremors in his body were still.

Finally, Sheldon put everything away, squared the apartment into alignment, and turned the lock on the door to that Leonard could let himself in come morning. He crawled into bed, and lifted one hand and stared at his palm. His fingers just barely shook now, only a little. He exhaled and closed his eyes, and eventually he was overtaken by sleep. He dreamed of laughing hyenas, of burning savannahs, of Amy wearing nothing but a white lab coat, a stethoscope hanging loosely around her neck, while they aimlessly floated along in a row boat on a sunkissed briny sea, each of them at an opposite end, bobbing back and forth on the waves like two children on a seesaw.

* * *

Leonard Hofstadter stood in the doorway of the apartment in the early hours of the morning before dawn, looking at his desk top and smelling the lingering scent of lemon Pledge in the air. Slowly, with a strange feeling of dread twisting in his stomach, he closed the door and made his way through the apartment to Sheldon's room, slowly and silently twisting the knob and pushing the door forward to look within. He took a step forward and stood in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest, watching his best friend—the man whom, inexplicably, Leonard loved more than his own brother—whimper in his sleep. He rested his head up against the doorframe and frowned, continuing to watch Sheldon sleep fitfully for several more minutes. Finally, Leonard glanced at his watch and slowly turned towards his own bedroom, the bad feeling in the pit of his stomach refusing to go away.

* * *

It had been a terrible drive home; at one point Amy almost had blown through a stop sign, and had had to slam on the brakes to avoid launching herself into the intersection. As a truck pulled through in front of her, Amy had taken a deep breath and told herself firmly, _You have got to get a grip, Fowler. Come on._

When she got home, Amy took a long shower, changed into her pajamas, and fastened her hair into a tight bun at the top of her head with an elastic. At first, she went to her harp, standing next to it, plucking a few strings and testing the way the sound made her feel before realizing it was not what she needed.

Instead, Amy went to her dishwasher, and took two glass jars–which had held strawberry jam and applesauce respectively–and carried them to her coffee table. She arranged them next to an empty coffee can and empty tea cup on a saucer, and then placed her statue of three monkeys in front of them. She picked up her coffee can full of change and spilled it all on the table, dropped a cushion on the ground, and curled up cross-legged on the floor on it. She sorted through the change with her fingertip idly, and fished out a quarter. Her eyes moved back and forth between the items before her on the table, and then, with a artful flick of her wrist, she bounced the quarter off the table, off the head of the "say no evil" monkey, against the side of the applesauce jar, and sent it clattering into the jam jar with a satisfying series of tings. She fished out a penny, and sent it pinging off the "see no evil" monkey's face, and watched it do a full double gainer before it landed in the strawberry jam jar. She fished out a nickel and slammed it against the table, letting it hit the "speak no evil" monkey hard, watching it flip high in the air before dropping into the coffee tin.

For over an hour, Amy turned her problems with Sheldon over in her mind as she sorted her change with trick shots off the 3 monkeys. She studied the statue, feeling a strange jab of victory and venom in her stomach every time she pinged a coin off their smug, unchanging faces and sent it plunging into a jar.

She knew where she wanted things with Sheldon to go; sometimes she had a hard time getting her work done and errands sorted out for the time she wasted on romantic reveries about him. This had to stop; she couldn't take it much longer, there were doubts and desires, insecurities and cupidity all niggling away in the back of her brain, and she they were beginning to unravel her usual peace of mind. She trusted Sheldon, absolutely, she knew that with him she had something special that other women only dreamed of and would kill for, no matter if most people couldn't see it. Nevertheless, she had come to that clichéd moment when a woman wants to know where her relationship is going, and Amy shuddered as she realized there was only one way to find out.

She had to ask him directly.

* * *

**Author's Note:** In a reversal of fortune, **xMarisolx **beta'ed for me. If it arouses any curiosity at all, all the credit goes to her. As always, thanks so much for reading.


End file.
